Corrections & clarifications: An earlier version of this story misspelled the last name of German President Joachim Gauck.

BERLIN — Each day, Bianca Schähler is surrounded by a rare form of nostalgia called Ostalgie that includes socialist chocolate bars, pickled comfort foods and Cold War-era bath towels.

Schähler, 59, manages a store here that sells household products, non-perishable foods, rose-tinted brands and, by extension, ways of living, from a time discarded a quarter-century ago when East and West Germany were reunited.

"Our aim is to keep the culture alive and to help people realize that not everything from that time was bad," said Schähler, who is from Thüringen, a small and sparsely populated former Eastern German state.

On Saturday, Germany will commemorate its Day of Unity to mark the 25th anniversary of the unification of East and West Germany. The national ceremony to be held in Frankfurt will include German Chancellor Angela Merkel (who was raised in East Germany), President Joachim Gauck, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and other European dignitaries.

Defecting East German soldier Hans Conrad Schumann leaps over a barbed-wire barricade at the Bernauer Street sector into West Berlin on Aug. 15, 1961. Schumann made his break for freedom to join his family, which had fled earlier to West Berlin. Peter Leibing, AP

The Brandenburg Gate is sealed off in the Soviet-occupied sector of East Berlin in 1961. At the center of the German capital, the gate stands behind part of the Berlin Wall that divides East and West Berlin. AP

People from East and West Germany gather for the opening of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Dec. 22, 1989. On Nov. 9, Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin Communist Party boss, declared that starting from midnight, East Germans would be free to leave the country at any point along the border. PATRICK HERTZOG, AFP/Getty Images

On Oct. 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany ended 45 years of post-World War II division and near total separation to become a single country. The Berlin Wall had fallen less than a year earlier, a dissolution that immediately — within 48 hours — saw 2 million people pour into the western-friendly West from the communist-supported
East.

Since then, a unified Germany has become a driving force in the European Union, as well as the region's largest and most powerful economy and political voice. In recent months, Germany was a leader on the world stage over Greece's debt situation and Europe's swelling migrant crisis. Germany has offered to take in large numbers of Syrian and other refugees on a scale matched only by similarly left-leaning and liberal Sweden.

There used to be considerable differences between the East and West: in life expectancy, productivity, joblessness, wages, skills, political affiliation and access to goods.

The economies of Germany's eastern states are still relatively weak compared to those in the western part of the country — where banks, carmakers and other major employers have their headquarters — but those gaps have steadily closed. As has the perception of any marked differences between the people of these previously distinct countries.

Felix Mihram, 37, is a West German whose mother was separated from her parents in East Germany at the age of 16 when the Berlin Wall went up in August 1961. He said people from the East are still characterized as less educated, less open-minded and less economically able than their counterparts in the West.

"But there is basically no difference now," he said. "And if there is, it's more about whether you come from a city or the countryside, not whether you come from the East or West."

Mihram was 11 when the partition came tumbling down, and he played in its ruins. He is now close to finishing his doctorate in European economic history.

"In the years after the wall fell, we would take pride in being able to spot someone from the East from a mile away — by their clothes or their (general demeanor) — in the same way that we now in Germany sometimes joke that we can spot an American a mile away: white sneakers, chino pants, a dark blue baseball cap that says USS Missouri on it," Mihram joked.

Still, Ostalgie, a compound of East (Ost) and nostalgia (nostalgie) persists, as was highlighted internationally with Wolfgang Becker's 2003 film Goodbye, Lenin!. But it may not fully exist outside of places like Schähler's store, called Ostpaket.

Schähler said she thinks her store in Berlin is the only one like it in Germany, and it serves tourists and former East Germans about equally.

Most customers are looking to buy candy that they remember from their childhood or certain kinds of Russian crackers, she said.

An East German chocolate spread is seen on a shelf in Ostpaket, a store in Berlin on Sept. 30, 2015.(Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)

And despite longing for some of the items from a bygone era, polls consistently show that East and West Germans are satisfied with reunification.

"There is no outward difference between us that I can detect," Schähler said, before acknowledging there are some.

"It seems to me that Easterners in general don't have as high expectations as Westerners. We're also harder workers and more helpful. For example, in my experience we are better at looking after our neighbors' children."

Peter Beyer, a member of parliament from Merkel's governing party, said that after 25 years of unification, the six East German states that were absorbed alongside the 10 West German ones into a single Germany are still referred to as the "new states."

"There is a difference between the East and West," he said Thursday in his office at the German parliament in Berlin. "We've come a long way, that's true, but young people still mostly see more (economic) opportunities in western Germany, where most of our big companies are and where there are more people."

He said West Germans often complain about having to pay a 5.5.% "solidarity tax" to finance reunification.

Data released ahead of Saturday's ceremony showed that since reunification, 3.3 million East Germans have migrated west, while 2.1 million West German have moved east.

"We sometimes say that unification in the hearts and minds of the people isn't quite there yet," Beyer said.